Ever learning. Always failing. Forever weak. Yet eternally saved. From a price to pay. Which I could and can not afford. Learning to live life. Learning to love life. Growing into shoes larger than my own. Finding meaning in Your name. Love and peace.
When I'm down and out and everything is terrible, with contracts being signed bearing unknowing consequences and necessary contracts not appearing, work life comes to a halt. Love life is a struggle because I don't feel I can support her, I don't listen or care about her. I have no passion. I have no motivation. I am in a pit and I am in "the dark place", where so many of us tend to find ourselves. Jobless, broke, no direction and no potential, no value in the world, no friends to rely on...it's a grim picture that I splash on the canvas.
Before you spare a moment of sympathy, and consider leaving a word of encouragement, let me ask you one vital question: do you NEED a reason to encourage someone else? Do you treat someone according to their product? Do you say "well done! keep it up!" like a master to a well trained dog, if they do what they were supposed to? And as logic follows, do you then berate them if they do it wrong; "YOU'RE USELESS!" The question stands; do you NEED a reason to encourage someone?
The verb "to encourage" stems from the Hebrew word "chazaq", of which has many meanings along the lines of to strengthen, prevail, be strong, become strong, be courageous, be firm, grow firm and many others. To strengthen someone else, to help them become strong, or help them prevail. Giving them the courage to grow and become firm.
Luke 4:18 - Jesus was teaching in synagogues and it was prophesised that the poor will hear the good news, the oppressed will taste freedom. Blind will see and deaf will hear. All because Jesus was encouraging and teaching people he didn't know.
Phillipians 4:8 - encourage others to think Godly, wholesome subjects and love the Lord always.
2 Thessalonians 2:17 - encourage our hearts, strengthening us in every good work and deed. Just as God gives us courage and hope, shouldn't we also strengthen our brothers and sisters?
I've listed a few things here. I feel there is a distinct lack of encouragement in my life.
I've said enough. Time to slump back into the shadows again.
It only occurred to me that I don't know what I'm doing tonight.
The TV blares The computers grumble
And I'm sat in front of a laptop, blogging.
I guess we're quite disjointed at the moment, as a family. Brother aggravates the computer, whilst Dad absorbs the noise of digital entertainment.
I have a heavy heart.
That I need to be a certain way...that I need to be moulded in a certain way...in order to fit into certain criteria as society suggests...as individuals suggests...as organisations suggests...as 6:13 dictates...suddenly, I feel so cramped. That I can't make a joke anymore. That I can't find joy in what I find joy in. The way I talk must change, because it's not enough/not expected. How I cut my hair isn't suitable or isn't acceptable. The clothes I wear aren't fashionable enough to represent church or the university. How often I spend somewhere in one time is too long. How MATURE I am; I need to be always sensible, always calm, always focused, never laughing, never joyful, never distracted, never me. I just don't know who I am anymore...who am I Jesus, if I'm supposed to be found in You, yet I'm not living up to these expectations of people, church, university, or others?
There must be more than what I know. I get the nagging feeling again...the instinctive knowledge that I'm putting God in His holy box...no matter how big or small it is, I subconsciously place Him there, due to what I have previously experienced.
Do I not have enough faith, to see big things happen? Do I need to do more? Do I need to do less? I have no idea about balance right now...in terms of learning and serving...even though both are a life long act of worship...or even any other ingredient involved in this big mix I know by "my walk with God".
I asked my Dad before "when have you seen a miracle in your life...impossible, against the odds incident?"
"Myself." he replied. "That I could come to know Him and that I am accepted, despite whatever I have done and said in the past. That He called my name three times and wants to know me and love me that much...myself. It's not about miracles. He's not bound by time, space and occassion. He works as He will. It's about the relationship."
And suddenly, the one thing I yearn so pitifully and so urgently for, was suddenly answered, in such a small way. That I could receive knowledge and wisdom from my parent. Even if it wasn't my mum, my dad is still my parent. And now I know I can approach him to ask.
And that I miss His voice. To just rest in His presence...and hear what He wants for me. I think I need to take my mind off of all the things that weigh me...my knee, my ankle, my studies, my future career, 6:13, church, how to grow, how to speak into people's lives, responding at the right times and creating the opportunities, how to speak to my family...just so many things...so overwhelming...yet, I want to just love Him more...
And by "Christmas time" I am referring to the holidays.
How am I spending it?
Currently I'm doing jury duty...if you've registered to be legible for electoral rights, then you are entered into the government database for jury duty...so I can vote...but I don't...cause I don't follow the politics of the country, which is bad...and I am therefore available to be on a jury panel.
Jury duty...you ask, "what's that? What do you do?" Well...imagine all those law scenes in films. Ally Mcbeal? Remember that show? I'm one of the people who votes with other people whether someone is guilty or not, after all the evidence has been presented. Sixty other people have been selected to do it this week...I only have to do it this week, as Christmas and New Year's Day is right around the corner.
If your name is read out whilst in the waiting room, you are one of the fifteen people to be available for being selected on the jury panel, which consists of twelve people...so that means that three people still might not do anything and will just get sent back.
I was sent back, haha...It's very nerve-wracking though. You swear an oath...and you are possibly condemning someone to a harsh sentence; deservedly or not is your own opinion.
Either way, I'm spending my first week of holiday alone. My housemates went back to Kenya and Ghana. I'm home alone for now...and praise the Lord. I need this time to reflect. To bask in His presence and just relax...Christmas cards need doing, as well as the monotonous duty of...wrapping =.="
But praise the Lord for my housemates. I don't feel as lonely. I see God's goodness through their company and playfulness, just lightening up the air and warming up the atmosphere, even if a fraction of a degree. The bite of cold is diluted when you're with people. When you have hope.
I found an awesome quote that really blesses me when I read it...
"The Christian faith is not true because it works; it works because it is true...It is not simply 'true for us'; it is true for any who seek in order to find, because truth is true even if nobody believes it and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it" - Os Guinness.
How do I solidify my feelings? How do I personify my attitude and ambition at the moment? A thought comes to mind...fire. And after a moments thought, with fingers on the line, crouched and poised to explode with thought and expression...I came out with this.
Fire; rampage and rustle, weave and transpose, stay and be, blaze fierce or flicker mildly, stay and be.
After reading my nonsense, I realised what I feel like. No matter how big or small my passion for Him may be, I will love Him all the same, because He loves me all the time too.
I've taken it off Facebook and my msn screen name...simply because not many people read this blog. Understandably too, it's very self centred. It's another outlet of my thoughts and feelings besides my journal.
I came home on Monday after a sweaty badminton session with Layla, Marcus, Ibi and Odo. It's becoming quite regular. Enjoyable, I guess.
Dad cooked. Gave me a few instructions. Then he left. And it was just me and Daniel in the house. Again.
I didn't know what to do. He was so uncooperative when I asked him to come off the computer. Unidimensional, is what Mel described him as. How true. He was so antagonistic when I politely asked him. Then for 3 hours, he was mithering me to allow him to go back on in the morning. I didn't allow him. I said that my rule when I'm looking after him was no computer games until 6pm, or until he finished his tasks I set him. As soon as I said that...I remembered Mum. I remembered all those times she spent praying with me, or those times I was made to remember verses, massaging me when my back was to the door and immersed in my world of anime, self-conscious paranoia and football.
A friend recently posted a video about a teacher, Taylor Mali, expressing his passion to teach. It wasn't to show them the beauty of the world, or force their ideals onto them, moulding youth into becoming their personal army of mindless puppets. Rather, this teacher just showed that regardless of how much money he was paid, or what his pupils thought of his techniques or teaching styles, he made a difference. It set off a long train of thought in my head. All those ruthless businessmen now, were probably bored by their teachers in school, sat on their desks thinking to themselves, "Why waste time here when I could be out there earning money by myself? I don't need this guy to teach me." and their was their mark of independance, the teacher's brand of difference. Adolf Hitler, apparently, developed his hate for Jewish people because he was bullied by one when he was younger, and thus went on to teach all generations that Jewish people are the scum of the Earth; Hitler's patented brand of justice and difference left a scar in history, ringing forever.
What does this have to do with me?
Suddenly, I'm taking the role of "teacher". Even more, I have become the "guardian". Many people can be relaxed about this. I SHOULD be relaxed. It's not in my inherent nature to be worked up about something excessively...yet when it comes to Daniel, I have to iron out my problems and see to it that he's going to see this life through...suddenly, I nearly feel like a FATHER. And it's a strange feeling.
However, moving that aside, I set Daniel some practise SATS questions from English, Maths, and Science papers. On top, tried to get some extra curricular activities there, like "practise guitar/piano for twenty minutes"...or otherwise. The thing I included Mum in, was the learning the bible verses...I found a book called "God's promises". It shows you all of Jesus's Names, or titles from the bible, such as Jesus our Lord, Jesus our Saviour. These are all backed by verses...and I make Daniel learn two from each title. I made him learn John 3:16 the other day...and I've never felt so overwhelmed by my responsibility. This is a taster of what is to come in the future, in my family. But God, as you see this, his anger and impatience to get on the computer, his uncooperation, his nonchalance about you, his hormones that rage and war inside producing words of discouragement and rebellion, let this be my prayer; as you see him and you see me, I want to let the world know that I'll be damned before I let him slip away from You, or from a healthy lifestyle beyond what he knows as "safe".
Although I've got the flu at the moment, I'm not going to let it deteriorate Daniel's teachings. This family is going to pull through together. And Jesus, You're at the head of the helm. Please give us some directions.
I remember starting this blog about a year ago, because a certain Kam Cheng convinced me to.
How has it started? Pretty good, I guess. I'm alive and kicking. I'm living with three great people in my own house. I've a solid group of friends in uni. I've learnt much about myself, which is what I wanted when I put down "Psychology BSc Hons" on my course choices. And I'm out of action for sport/football for at least 6 months.
Where do I start? I guess you'll want to know about how I moved into my house.
Originally, I thought that I would like to move out somewhere ideally close to uni and church, maybe slightly closer to church...The main reason for this was so that I wasn't being a leech any longer to my Dad. Personally, independance is when people aren't pursuing you, asking after things that you should have sorted out through good planning and initiative. For example..."Do you want me to cook for you?" Or "Do you want me to wash up the dishes?"; "Have you hoovered your room up yet?". I felt a quick and dirty way of learning a lot of that is through moving out and spending a year doing things on my own.
So, around June, I started asking some of my friends on my course. Initially, me and two girls were looking. After a while, one of my friends pulled out, because she couldn't maintain the cost of her car and house; she put her car as a higher priority than moving out, because she could be more independant, going where she wanted, when she wanted. That left me with my coursemate, Odoley...who is a girl. A guy being left in a house alone with a girl...leaves him in an untenable position. It's like saying "let's do dodgy things together" every night we're alone, even if things seem ok for the first few months. So I pulled out too. Looked like I was going to stay at home...until a friend told me he wanted to move to Manchester so he could be closer to his friends. Awesome. So I called back Odoley, who had nowhere to stay when I last checked. She was actually teaming up with Ibi, another coursemate, and someone else. So, we quickly joined forces against the forces of accomodation-less evil and became a gang of five. After lots of looking around, we eventually landed on two places where we wanted to move into soon, as uni was starting not too far from then. One place was dirt cheap, but when me and Odoley looked at it, the place wasn't finished...he promised us it would've been done in a month, more or less in time for us to start uni. The other place was gorgeous; lots of the furniture and utensils were brand new. However...the larger size of the unfinished house appealed to the majority of our gang of five. So...we eventually decided to go. Haha. Odoley and Ibi came all the way from London with a single coach ticket, with all their gear; suitcases, hairdryers, textbooks, all their uni malarky. I meet them and we get a taxi to the house. We arrive. We open the door.
It's unfinished.
And when I mean it's unfinished, I didn't mean that half the house hadn't been built yet. Not QUITE as dramatic as that. However, the ONLY shower in the house wasn't functioning, the rubbery solder material that joins the bath to the wall, which is originally WHITE, was BLACK. The toilet wasn't working. There was a slug living on my window sill (in the room I was GOING to move into, anyways!). Phone wires were dangling from the ceiling. Spices were strewn all over the drawers and kitchen floor. Even for students, this house wasn't suitable for living. That's saying something. Deflated and in despair, Ibi and Odoley retired to Ibi's aunty's place for the day. Soon after that incident, the fifth person, Odoley's friend who I haven't met yet, pulled out. Five became four. I had no idea what to do.
Until I remembered there was an aunty who owned a four person property. It was cheap, but everything was brand new. I called her, to find out that it was still available, but going soon, due to the high interest from other groups. We looked at it on a Friday. We moved in on the following Saturday.
God is good...because I have been praying in bits and babs across summer about the house, somewhere close to uni and church. Yet, even as we lost the opportunity to move in that day, because the landlord hadn't made sure the house was finished, I felt that God still had plans for me to move out. The house I'm in takes fifteen minutes to walk to uni or church. He's a faithful One. For sure.
Uni started on the 24th September. It felt almost good, knowing where I needed to be, which buildings where what, being able to walk on Oxford Road alone, with a purpose and not just idling about.
I attended Student Fellowship on Thursday. It is so good to be spiritually fed. Grace, the assistant fellowship leader. shared with us a passage from Haggai 1. The Lord was telling Haggai a message to pass onto the Jews, who were allowed to return to Jerusalem after a long time of exile. God was telling them to rebuild God's temple, not just rebuild their houses. "Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it." That's what God said to the Jews, in order to convey that as humans, we are never satisfied with what we have; even if we have money, we usually want more to be comfortable or safe, or to buy something we like. We might overeat, because we don't think we've had enough. Then God projects His message clearly by saying "Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honoured." (verse 8). "You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. Why? Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house."
Grace's message to us was that although we are the temple of the Holy Spirit and need no physical construction of a place for God's presence, how often do we actually MAKE time for God and worship Him through prayer, reading His word, taking time out to preach the Gospel and just glorify Him, rather than putting God into OUR routine? Do we actually prioritise glorifying God first, before organising our lives?
That was such an awesome worship message. It reminded me very much of the 1 Timothy 4:1-5 message. It says that "If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task...He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God's church?)
As time passed...even after two weeks went by...I realised that it was so easy to be an irresponsible student. To just ditch my family behind and enjoy myself, as I wanted, all about me me me. Daniel is still young, but uneducated and without guidance in life, career wise, academically, socially or spiritually. Dad is so busy preparing sermons, flying to the other side of the world to preach, going to lectures and setting up his gambling help ministry, that he doesn't have much time to spend with his sons, or to maintain the house. Moving out, after realising this, was like a relentless, perpetual pain, gently carving, then tearing and scrunching up my stomach. Shelley, the mother of Samuel, said to me the night before they left for Canada, that Dad would be so lonely without my company.
Even now, Dad is away in Milton Keanes, attending lectures. For the next two weeks, I'm back in Bury, living and looking after Daniel.
And I just can't do it on my own...
Being a student isn't easy, by any means. You scrape by this phase in life by drawing money from sundry sources, frivolously playing where you will, working as hard you need or want and somehow, finding yourself with a degree, with your name scrawled in fancy handwriting, and looking for a job. Yet, my student life is...almost haunted by the fact I can't enjoy myself. I do love my youth. But Dad's family is now my family. The absense of Mum means that everyone has to play a part in holding it up; everyone is each other's pillars. I'm trying to reach out to Daniel, but our relationship has never been great.
I tore a posterior cruciate ligament in my knee four months ago playing football. I paid no attention to it, because I usually heal quick. I'm not injury prone. But as I couldn't play properly due to pains whilst I play, I checked it out. Via an appointment and MRI scan results, the Doctor told me that I can have surgery or have physio first and see how that lasts. I don't want them to cut open my knee, possibly due to the inhibition the fear of pain presents, or maybe I just don't trust them. Either way, I'm going to try physio for a couple of months and see how it heals.
I'll probably be out of action for six months. I have a lot of time to grow...but I pray that God will show me how. I'm getting the heavy shoulder feeling, where I know I need to go through this, yet I can't see past the end of my fingertips. God is faithful and He's shown me that. There's such a fine balance between having fun and responsibilty...discipline is a skill that needs to be reinforced day by day, through sacrifice after sacrifice. I Just Need You Here With Me Right Now...
Thursday, September 03, 2009
「€Œ 7:35 pm 」 » 
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